1.3.6-Aphraseremains
Brick!Club 1.3.6 I adore you Suddenly joining in with Brick!Club a hundred pages in, having finally acquired a copy. Hi! So, this is a fairly short chapter, in which I find Favourite kind of excellent and very interesting. I just like the incredibly violent way she says she would react to Blacheville stopping loving her – and then turns around and cheerfully admits to Dahlia that she totally hates him. I’m not certain how Hugo intends her to come across here – it’s a definite contrast to Fantine’s love and virtue and all that – but I like that she just goes “no, he’s an asshole, but there’s that guy over there who is really nice and adores me, so.” And of course it’s more foreshadowing for the ‘surprise.’ I wonder how this would come across for people who don’t know the plot already. I suppose there’s still the overwhelming sense of a terrible shoe about to drop, since we’ve had several chapters by now of general happiness, and that certainly wasn’t going to last, not in Les Miserables. Also, Blacheville really is a total douche, isn’t he? Because he’s hearing her say how angry she’d be if he left and getting all smug about it – and is in fact aware that this little outing will end with him leaving her. He’s not just being smug about how much she says she looooooooves him, he’s pleased with the idea that he’s going to hurt her and piss her off by doing this (as opposed to freeing her up to happily pursue that sweet actorly copyist over there, as he is actually doing). Also also, “one day when I was making batter for pancakes he said, “Mamselle, if you were to make your gloves into fritters I’d eat them.” It takes a real artist to say a thing like that.” Really, Favourite? A line like that is a sign of an artistic temperament? Okay then. Commentary Pilferingapples Welcome! I love that we’re still getting new people!:) That line is so horrible, and yet Favourite is totally slain. Has she got an honest affection for socially awkward dorks? Does she just know the difference between language that is unusual because it’s rare and language that’s unusual because it’s really dumb? Either way, I hope he as just one of a string of artists that entertained her for the rest of her life. You go, Favorite. Have some fun. May you get lots of..uh..early spring crops? …Yeah I have no idea how we’re supposed to feel about Favorite. She’s clearly no chaste maiden, and yet the guys she’s snarking on are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE people. Is this supposed to be some comment on how mistreating people makes them respond badly, or a lament about young women trained to cynicism too early, or what? Because it’s way more than just “ew nasty impure girls”. Guinevak (reply to Pilferingapples) I… don’t think Hugo is necessarily going for any coherent point about Favourite here? Like, obviously Favourite is a foil for Fantine in several ways — she doesn’t care about Blachevelle, she already has the next guy lined up, she doesn’t mind if people see her underwear or lack thereof, and she’s also not going to get her heart broken into eighty thousand pieces in the next chapter. But there is no judgment either way in the narrative, as there is with Fantine — he’s showing, not telling. So yes, it is definitely more than “ew nasty impure girls”. I don’t think Hugo particularly gives a toss about “impurity” except as it results from and feeds back into suffering. Fantine’s pure heart matters not because it makes her “better” than the other women but because it makes her infinitely more vulnerable. And that sucks — why should being innocent and trusting and loving mean you’re more likely to be horribly hurt, why does the world work that way? (Why should desperately trying to feed your family mean you’re condemned by society forever? Why should being a small helpless cute child mean that another child’s parents hate and abuse you? It’s a recurring theme!) So Favourite is not vulnerable as Fantine is vulnerable, and this passage makes that explicit (as well as being hilarious). That doesn’t make her a bad person, it just means she’s probably going to be Okay whereas Fantine is going to be devastated.